It’s shocking that the UK is on the verge of burning more waste than it recycles. There are numerous councils where it is already happening, and on current trends it will soon become a national problem – but the China ban could bring that moment forward. There is a logic to generating energy from the waste that we can not recycle or reuse, but it is meant to be the last resort.

What we have created instead is a market-driven system of incinerators that constantly need to be fed. As restrictions have been placed on sending rubbish to landfill, our waste has been diverted into these newly built incinerators, rather than increasing levels of recycling. In the past few years recycling of domestic waste have almost flatlined, at just over 11m tonnes per year, while incineration has grown from 5.5m tonnes in 2012-13 to over 10m in 2016-17.

None of this is due to people’s reluctance to recycle, or to do their bit for the environment. Over the past 30 years I have seen time and again that people will respond positively if the local authorities make recycling facilities easy and convenient to use. Design is the key. It’s easy to build modern flats with room for kitchen waste to be collected, or to have separate street bins for recyclables, but this has often been slow to happen. There is a huge gap between the best and the worst local authority. Well-heeled Westminster council recycles 16% of the waste it collects and burns 82%. By contrast, East Riding of Yorkshire manages 63% recycling and less than a third goes to incineration. This doesn’t mean that most people in Westminster or Lewisham or Birmingham or Portsmouth or any other area with poor recycling rates can’t be bothered; it means that their councils can’t.

Our use of materials needs to be a closed loop, where everything gets reused

Burning waste is not good for climate change and there are fears over the health impacts of incinerators because of the weaknesses of their air pollution monitoring systems. However, it is the sheer waste of burning a valuable resource which annoys me most. Incinerators are the ash-producing products of our make, break and throw-away culture. I personally try my best to refuse and reuse, but when I do recycle, I want the reassurance that my efforts to do so will not be betrayed by someone shoving it all into a furnace.

While most individuals are happy to act, the government has failed to take responsibility for our collective impact on the world by encouraging the UK recycling companies who will turn muck into brass. The China ban shows the folly of a strategy that relies on exporting our recycling and burning the rest. A charge on incineration would level the playing field and help those who want to set up the infrastructure to recycle plastics and other materials. We also need a minimum level of recyclables included in manufactured products so that there is a bigger market for the increase in recycled materials.

MPs call for 25p charge on takeaway coffee cups ahead of possible ban

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We urgently need to ban plastics that can’t be recycled and for businesses to set up proper systems for those that local authorities find most difficult. The polluter should pay. If it is hard to recycle certain plastics, like those on the inside of coffee cups, then we have to think radically. The 25p charge on coffee shop cups suggested by a committee of MPs would encourage us to switch to reusable cups. The charge on plastic bags changed our habits, so would this. Likewise, deposit schemes for plastic bottles, and also glass bottles, would be popular.

Our use of materials needs to be a closed loop, where everything gets reused. Nature doesn’t waste anything and neither should we. Companies and consumers need a steer and a nudge from the government, but I think there is now public recognition that we value our planet and the wealth of its wildlife more than we enjoy the convenience of a plastic lined, disposable coffee cup.

• Jenny Jones is the former chair of the Green party and a former deputy mayor of London